America’s Social Mirror: 2024 GSS Continues Five Decades of Tracking Change
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June 2025
The latest dataset includes questions on today’s digital society, perceptions of national identity, and mental health stigma.
The General Social Survey has just released its 2024 dataset, marking another milestone in America’s longest-running social science project. Conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago since 1972, the GSS is one of the most cited sources of data used in social science. This year’s data collection represents both continuity and innovation—maintaining the survey’s core mission while adapting to a rapidly changing technological landscape.
Multi-mode data collection bridges traditional interviews with digital participation.
Like the 2022 GSS, the 2024 GSS employed a multi-mode design that builds on methodological experiments begun during the pandemic years. NORC collected data between April and December 2024, incorporating both traditional face-to-face interviews and web-based surveys—a hybrid approach that we developed by necessity during COVID-19 but has proven valuable to ensure adequate representation of the general public.
This methodological evolution reflects lessons we learned from the 2022 GSS, when we conducted a systematic experiment comparing different sequences of web and face-to-face data collection. Our “mode-sequencing” study found that the order in which survey modes are offered significantly impacts costs, but both sequences yield equivalent estimates.
Social participation, digital navigation, and mental health broaden the GSS’s 2024 research scope.
The 2024 GSS tackles contemporary issues while maintaining the survey’s historical core questions. New modules explore how Americans navigate today’s digital society, perceptions of national identity, and mental health stigma—topics that reflect the survey’s ongoing effort to capture emerging social phenomena while preserving longitudinal comparability.
Questions related to the 2024 election also feature prominently, continuing the GSS’s tradition of documenting American political attitudes during pivotal moments. Since 1972, the survey has captured public opinion through 13 presidential elections, creating an unparalleled record of societal change over five decades. In 2024, the GSS continued collaborating with the American National Election Survey (ANES), with select GSS respondents receiving both the GSS baseline and ANES pre-election and post-election surveys.
“I think one of the things I’m most excited about is how the 2024 GSS—along with the other surveys in the International Social Survey Programme—are together exploring national identity and digital communities,” says René Bautista, co-principal investigator of the GSS. “It will give us a global perspective on these emerging issues.”
“One of the things I’m most excited about is how the 2024 GSS—along with the other surveys in the International Social Survey Programme—are together exploring national identity and digital communities.”
Grid formats, response options, and web design shape survey quality.
The 2024 release includes experiments included in 2022, designed to improve data quality and address modern survey challenges. Building on our work from 2021 and 2022, NORC has continued testing how web-based questionnaire formats affect responses to historically important questions.
In our 2022 and 2024 experiments, we examined whether presenting questions in grid format versus individual items affects responses and how displaying traditionally “volunteered” response options (like “no opinion”) influences survey results.
Post-stratification weights and Census alignment maintain national representativeness despite declining responses.
The 2024 GSS continues efforts to maintain representativeness despite declining survey participation rates nationwide. NORC has implemented new post-stratification weights that align survey results with U.S. Census estimates across key demographic characteristics, including education, age, race, and geographic region.
These methodological improvements are particularly important given declining response rates—a global trend in survey research. But researchers acknowledge the importance of ensuring that survey participants accurately represent the broader American population.
Six decades of adaptation demonstrate the GSS’s enduring value for understanding change.
As the GSS enters its sixth decade, the 2024 release demonstrates the project’s adaptability and enduring value. By successfully integrating new data collection methods while preserving historical comparability, the survey continues fulfilling its original mission: providing researchers, policymakers, and the public with reliable data about American social change.
The 2024 GSS reminds us that understanding society requires both innovation and persistence—qualities that have made this survey an indispensable resource for comprehending American life across generations of profound change.
The 2024 General Social Survey data are available through NORC at the University of Chicago and partner institutions. Documentation and methodological reports provide detailed information about data collection procedures and experimental designs.
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